Business
Structural Models
Structural models in business refer to frameworks or representations used to analyze and understand the organizational structure, processes, and relationships within a company. These models help to identify key components, such as roles, responsibilities, and communication channels, and can be used to optimize operations, improve decision-making, and drive organizational change.
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4 Key excerpts on "Structural Models"
- Angel Salazar, Steve Sawyer(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- World Scientific(Publisher)
In a similar vein, Applegate defines a business model as “a description of a Adamantia Pateli & George Giaglis 122 complex business that enables study of its structure, the relationships among its elements, and how it responds to the real world” 12 . In this case, the graphical design of a business model gives rise to the specification of an information system’s data and functional requirements. 2.2 Components Along with research on defining the scope and focus of business models, a quite great part of research in the area is focusing on decomposing business models into their structural elements. In essence, studies referring to business model components adopt a simplistic approach of partitioning business models and then examining their elements in isolation. From a management perspective, Rayport and Jaworski argue that a ‘new economy’ business model requires four choices 13 : 1) a value proposition for targeted customers; 2) a scope of marketspace offering, which could be a product, service, information, or all three; 3) a unique, defendable resource system; and 4) a financial model, which includes a firm’s revenue model, shareholders’ value models, and future growth models. Moreover, Osterwalder suggests four pillars and nine building blocks as components framework for describing business models. The four pillars are 14 ; Product Innovation (Innovation and Learning Perspective), Customer Relationship (Customer Perspective), Infrastructure Management (Internal Business Perspective) and Financial Aspects (Financial Perspective). 2.3 Conceptual models The primary purpose of a conceptual model is to specify dimensions of business model analysis, identify the main components that are relevant to each dimension, and provide an illustration for each level. The literature review has spotted two general streams of research in this domain.
eBook - PDF- Clive L. Dym, Harry E. Williams(Authors)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
35 2 Structural Models and Structural Modeling Summary This book is about the business of modeling structures and their behavior. Thus, this chapter is devoted to describing in greater detail what it means to talk about Structural Models in the context of the modeling process. Bars, Beams, Arches, Frames, and Shells There are two broad categories of structures: those whose principal direction or line of action is coincident with the loads to which they are subjected and those whose principal direction or action is perpendicular to the direction of the applied loads. Within these broad confines we can further subdivide the domain of structural elements according to the number of physical dimensions needed to account properly for the behavior of interest—a number that is at least one, often two, but certainly no more than three! Thus, structures are often viewed as one- or two dimensional, depending on the relative magnitudes of a structure’s physical dimensions and the number of (independent) spatial vari-ables in the equation(s) of equilibrium in the structure’s mathematical model. The directionality and dimensionality issues interact in our attempt to sort structures into neat categories. This is because it is easier to create simplified, idealized models of structural elements or types than it is to ensure that all structures act in just such simple ways. However, our idealized models are widely representative of basic structural forms, and they do provide a vocab-ulary for identifying, describing, and analyzing more complicated structural forms and thus more complex structures. There are cases where one- and two-dimensional idealizations will not do. For example, stress analyses of holes and cracks requires more detailed analysis, even when they occur in the gusset plates of trusses made up of one-dimensional bars.
eBook - PDFService-Oriented Modeling
Service Analysis, Design, and Architecture
- Michael Bell(Author)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
Work with domains and treat them as units of analysis during the integration process. Conceive of these domains as business containers that the services must reside in. Imagine that the service-oriented integration process is about a matter of finding the right business frameworks for services to operate within. The contextual perspectives (discussed in Chapter 9) will enable identification of the affiliation of services with business models and strategies. The structural formations, however, will physically host the services and integrate them in a specific business physical operating environment. So, work with domains and treat them as the pillars of the structural integration process. What are these foundations? What are the business formations that enable proper alignment of services with business domains? There are four major components of the service-oriented business integration structural model, each of which presents business domains from a different formation perspective as depicted in Exhibit 10.1. • Integration structures. Integration structures are rudimentary business domain forma-tions that services should be aligned with. • Geographic boundaries. Geographic boundaries are physical locations that business domains operate from. • Distribution structures. Distribution structures are physical business domain formations which are dispersed to various geographical locations. • Control methods. Control methods are the management mechanisms by which business domains are controlled. BUSINESS ARCHITECTURE INTEGRATION STRUCTURES As with any other architecture modeling practice, business domains can also be compartmentalized and arranged in various forms to best serve an organizational business model. They can be layered, tiered, and distributed across geographic locations to best fit enterprise objectives. The layers and tiers of business architectural patterns are also a convenient way to visually convey a business integration environment.
eBook - PDFUnderstanding Matrix Structures and their Alternatives
The Key to Designing and Managing Large, Complex Organizations
- William G. Egelhoff, Joachim Wolf(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
It is important to notice that the organization design problem discussed above differs significantly 2 The Historical and Conceptual Contexts for Understanding... 35 from the problem associated with fitting elementary and matrix struc- tures to the strategies and environments of large, complex organizations. The latter concerns macro-level organization design, where it is difficult to directly measure the flows of information between subunits. 2.7 An Information-Processing Model for Relating Strategy and Structure Figure 2.3 shows an information-processing model for relating strategy and structure. Information processing is conceptualized as an abstract intervening concept. Its role in the model is to help us relate strategy and structure, which are not directly comparable concepts. On the one hand, the impact of an organization’s strategy and the environmental factors that it chooses to deal with can be expressed in terms of the information- processing requirements they create. On the other hand, the potential of an organization to cope with these requirements can be expressed in terms of the information-processing capacities provided by its organiza- tion design, including its structure. The boxes with solid lines are meant to indicate that strategic and environmental conditions, and organiza- Fig. 2.3 An information-processing model of strategy–structure fit 36 Understanding Matrix Structures and their Alternatives tional structure are directly measured variables. The boxes with broken lines indicate that information-processing requirements and capacities are abstract variables, which can only be derived from measured variables.
Index pages curate the most relevant extracts from our library of academic textbooks. They’ve been created using an in-house natural language model (NLM), each adding context and meaning to key research topics.
